For a Fearless Leader, there are four must-have characteristics, which we've grouped into quadrants, and they are:
As you can see from the image here, they flow into each other. They're also connected to a sense of personal freedom, focused thinking and the essential notion of happiness as a component of success. Let's look at each of these 4 attributes and how they reflect on, influence and strengthen each other.
The courage to fail in order to succeed is the most ubiquitous success secret of fearless leaders, and it’s also one of the characteristics that most reliably separates high potentials from everyone else.
Why is this trait so connected with high potential? Because the courage to fail provides the ability to tolerate risk and uncertainty, and that tolerance allows a leader to expand his or her comfort zone more easily and more often.
Fearless leaders take on more important challenges and, if they stumble while learning to tackle those challenges, they become better at learning from their setbacks. And that leads us to...
If no plan survives first contact with reality, then a big part of what separates those who succeed from those who fail is the ability to regroup and recover when plans fail and falter. How do you react to setbacks and failures when they do happen?
Some people seek to cope with setbacks by taking counterproductive actions, because they react to their negative emotions and doubts. They overeat or drink or use retail therapy to make themselves feel better temporarily.
Others -- the fearless leaders -- react by taking productive actions. They push past the negative emotions to learn from their setbacks and failures, but at the same time, they take action to keep themselves "in the game" and on the road to recovery. This is resilience.
Leaders develop resilience by emphasizing positive emotions, traits, institutions and social relationships. By banning negativity and concentrating on what's good rather than what's bad in one's life, a person realigns the focus toward success and can consciously steer their actions in that direction -- even in the face of setbacks or failures.
And this feeds into the third characteristic:
A fearless leader masters the control of his own mind by staying in the present and being mentally available and focused on positively engaging the situation at hand. This leads to a consistent focus on mindset: how a leader has oriented his thoughts, perceptions, and intentions.
This is why every Fearless Leader becomes a "mindset maniac" -- constantly checking in with her own emotions and resetting or rebooting her mental software as she needs to in order to stay effective mentally and emotionally.
We're all imperfect. Even the most high-achieving military professionals, Olympic athletes, and business leaders can have doubts that sabotage their success. But these high achievers continually take important steps to overcome their insecurities and doubts: They recognize when they have destructive thoughts and they reframe that negativity to become positive.
When you combine a consistent Mindset for Success with The Courage to Fail, you simply end up Operating from a Higher Consciousness.
Most people spend the majority of their day reacting and therefore operating from a fairly low level of their consciousness. They let events and their most reactive emotions drive their actions and their thoughts.
Fearless leaders are the opposite -- their courage makes them proactive, and their mindfulness keeps them from reacting and provides them with better options, so that they can continue to operate from a position of self-awareness and goal orientation. We call that Operating from One's Highest Consciousness
Higher Consciousness leads to many more Mindful Moments that power success. In a Mindful Moment you are fully present in your most powerful, creative, knowledgeable and wise self.
In this way, all of the characteristics of Fearless Leadership contribute to each other, and lead to the emotional intelligence that creates positive change.
The power behind this model stems from how actionable it is when combined with an Emotional Intelligence test and a custom consulting or coaching engagement.
The Emotional Intelligence Assessment tells us where a leader's opportunities for growth are, but the Fearless Leaders Coaching Model tells us how to understand ESI weak spots in terms of core leadership needs.
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Fearless Leaders grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. It’s the most practical book I’ve read on how to heighten mindfulness and ignite personal courage. It’s a powerful book, tough at times, tender at others. From her own fearless experiences, and those of leaders she’s studied, Dr. Cathy Greenberg offers revealing self-assessments, intimate first-person examples, and engaging applied exercises. Follow the steps she outlines and they will enable you to achieve higher levels of performance and greater awareness of yourself and your environment. With Fearless Leaders as your guide you’ll make better decisions and lead a more passionate life. You can’t ask for more than that from any book!
—Jim Kouzes
Fearless Leaders tackles (and teaches) one of the most complex attributes of outstanding leaders throughout history, moral courage.
—Amy Edmondson
That's a tough one, moral courage is hard to teach and it's such an important quality for leaders. If we could get more people to step up to use moral courage more often - we would see better results.
—Jerry Boykin
After having the pleasure of recording an On Demand Seminar with Dr. Cathy Greenberg, I was astonished by her ground-breaking perspective on leadership, and the role she takes herself as an inspirational leader. Not only did I learn to sharpen my focus, she also showed me how to achieve greater confidence and courage to become an inspirational leader myself. She was truly a pleasure to work with, and I am thrilled that she accepted to be a faculty at the Gazelles Growth Institute.
—Daniel Marcos
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